Alexei Kosygin

Alexei Kosygin (21 February 1904-18 December 1980) was a Soviet politician who served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 15 October 1964 to 23 October 1980, succeeding Nikita Khrushchev and preceding Nikolai Tikhonov.

Biography
Alexei Kosygin was born and educated in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire, and he worked in Siberia before studying at the Leningrad Textile Institute from 1930 to 1935. His dramatic rise to become Soviet Commissar for the Textile Industry in January 1939 was the result of comeptence, hard work, and the Great Purge, which had just opened up many posts to new aspirants. He was Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars from 1940 to 1946, and organized the evacuation of industrial enterprises from the advancing German forces in the West during World War II. He was Finance Minister in 1948, and was Minister for Light Industry from 1949 to 1953. His relationship with Nikita Khrushchev was somewhat rocky, and he rose to prominence again only after Khrushchev's demise in 1964, when he became the most important person in party and state next to Leonid Brezhnev. Despite his greater vision and intellect, it was the latter's predictability and greyness that appealed to the CPSU machine, so that Kosygin's influence dwindled in the years before his retirement. His initial arguments for economic reform and greater expenditure on consumer goods were undercut by the events of the Prague Spring, which demonstrated to many the political dangers inherent in economic reform. He retired because of ill health just before his death.